Cop Fired For Racism Raises Questions About Implicit Bias Training

Police departments are experimenting with anti-bias training that seems to be ineffective.

A white Detroit police officer is on the unemployment line over a racist social media post, at a time when police departments across the nation are supposedly training officers to keep their racial bias in check.

The Detroit Police Department confirmed on Monday that they fired rookie Officer Sean Bostwick and opened an investigation into his racially offensive social media post, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Bostwick, 27, posted a photo to Snapchat on Sunday of himself in uniform with the caption “Another night to Rangel (sic) up these zoo animals.” Later that day, Detroit police officials said they were notified about the post and suspended the officer shortly after.

“He will no longer be a Detroit police officer,” Police Chief James Craig said in a press conference on Monday, adding that the ex-officer “expressed remorse” and claimed that his comments were misinterpreted.

Training at Michigan’s police academies address anti-bias in several modules, including one named Cultural Competence and Sexual Harassment, Danny Rosa, a training specialist at the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, told NewsOne.

“We’ve recently developed and pilot tested some additional curriculum addressing implicit bias,” he added. “This curriculum addresses more than just racial and gender bias, it addresses some of the brain science behind implicit bias and how it can influence our decisions on many issues. This curriculum is still a work in progress.”

Police department nationwide have experimented with implicit bias training, especially since widespread protests ignited over the spate of police killings of unarmed Black men, according to the New York Times.

However, critics have said racial sensitivity training simply doesn’t work, experts told the Times. Teaching White cops about the history of racial discrimination and African-American culture rarely helps when officers make split-second decisions. They tend to default to their lifelong biases about Black people.

Police implicit bias training may have been a waste of time in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the police are reportedly twice as likely to stop Black motorists, according to MLive.com.

Officers were generally apprehensive but receptive to the training. A small group of cops openly rebelled against the training concepts because they felt that it offered no practical benefits and was a politically correct fad.

14. Hill attends the Glamour Women Of The Year Awards in 2017

Anita Hill: 15 Photos Of Powerful Moments Speaking Out For Women

Before several women shared their MeToo stories this year, Anita Hill's story had struck a chord. Her 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony laying bare sexual harassment while working for then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas became one of the most powerful women's history moments of the late 20th century.
Hill galvanized Black women to take action: 1,600 women took out a New York Times ad in support of her in 1991. She had the ears of hundreds of African-American women and the eyes of national TV audiences on her despite the personal character attacks that came during her testimony.
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Though Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court, Hill's story still had a lasting impact on women. Cultural scholars have connected The Year Of The Woman — a reference to the flurry of women elected for the first time to the Senate in 1992 — to Hill's 1991 hearings.
She has connected her story to other MeToo women and recognized the significance of the movement in changing conversations about sexual harassment.
“There has been a tremendous amount of change in public attitude and there has been a change in the information we have about sexual harassment,” Hill, who is a law professor at Brandeis University and chair of the entertainment industry's Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, told John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight" in July, Time reported. “Even a few years ago, people were ambivalent about what the consequences should be concerning behaving incredibly badly in the workplace.”
Hill has made history for speaking out for women, and here are a few of her memorable moments.